The Science of Marijuana
Let's give some history on my knowledge of the subject first. So as you all know I am a regular pot smoker (in fact every post on this forum is made under the influence) at the same time I'm also attending medical school. One of the things that always strikes me is the number of ridiculous things people believe are supported by science. I am a staunch supporter of legalization with regulation however I will discuss that after I discuss the history and science of the subject.
Do not mistake my thoroughness in this post for outrageous support for smoking marijuana 24/7. While I do partake in marijuana nearly constantly I have maintained a 4.0 GPA throughout highschool (excusing my senior year) and throughout college. I do not condone breaking the law nor am I attempting to convince others to do so. I do not smoke when I'm driving or when I'm about to be driving regardless of evidence which shows relatively little risk. I do not smoke where it's not safe to do so and I would never risk smoking if there was any real chance of me being caught or reported. This post is designed to present factual information, what you do with that information is up to you.
Let's examine the history of Marijuana first. The first thing you may notice is Marijuana's status throughout history is its long standing as legal as the world's most abundant industrial crop. The first US laws on the subject actually required farmers to grow Hemp. Now Industrial Marijuana or Hemp is not typically the type you can get high on (different harvesting, different breed but same species) containing only traces of the active ingredients called canabinoids.
In fact Marijuana had an astounding number of uses and still maintains it's spot as the number one medically active and beneficial drug with over 250 illnesses which respond to marijuana and it is the number one industrial crop. Marijuana produces the strongest natural fiber known to man, hemp doesn't rot, and it's water proof. At one point almost all textiles, foods, and structures had some component of marijuana in them. Canvas is actually named after canabis. Lets discuss a few of these traits in depth.
If you've ever been to the museums and seen ancient historical documents (such as the first two drafts of the declaration of independence) you quickly note the difference between documents from 200 years ago, and documents made with wood paper only 100 years ago. Hemp documents suffer almost no decay and can be maintained indefinitely. On the other hand wood paper is extremely vulnerable to all of the elements. Hemp clothing lasts 5-10 times as long as cotton. Further with modern production techniques the quality of clothing can be massively improved with hemp over say cotton.
It would not be inaccurate to say that America wouldn't exist without hemp. The ships we came on, the food that sustained us, the clothing we wore, all of it was hemp.
Hemp seeds and hemp oils have long been a staple of countries around the world for food. Hemp seeds produce the most nutritionally dense flour known to man. They are packed with essential nutrients, fiber, vitamins, essential fatty acids and they are great sources of elements which (while we don't require them) improve the overall health of a person. Hemp seeds have been called nature's perfect food for over 8,000 years and hemp was probably amongst the earliest crop cultivated. Further hemp seeds have a noted role in helping the immune system.
Hemp oil on the other hand is the most balanced oil you can find in nature for human cosumption with natural ratio of 3:1 LA to LNA or the 'ideal' ratio. Perhaps most interestingly is that Hemp is one of the only natural sources of gamma linoleic acids a rare but extremely beneficial fatty acid. Even better hemp oil creates an amazing natural moisturizer reproducing the chemistry of the most expensive moisturizers naturally. The hemp oil can also be turned into super strong biodegradable plastics.
Hemp's use in paper is well known but the reason it's so great for that is it's cellulose level. This cellulose level coincidentally also makes it's ideal for the production of ethanol for biofuel. In fact Hemp consumes equal carbon dioxide (if not more) in it's growth cycle as the amount of CO2 released from combustion. Further unlike corn or the woody products we use hemp grows ridiculously fast and ridiculously easily. Henry ford famously created the body of a car completely from hemp plastic in 1941, the plastic was lighter and cheaper than steel. Even better, the plastic could withstand 10x the force before denting. Of course after WWII the US returned to the stance that marijuana was illegal. Alas we would have to wait for advancements in aluminum and synthetic fiberglass manufacturing before auto-makers really began utilizing better materials than steel (fairly recently in fact).
However oddly they completely revised the original reason marijuana had been made illegal (which was violence and crazy minorities) to undermining the american fighting spirit by creating pacifists and encouraging kids to think. The drug went from producing murderers, lunatics and bad judgement as sold to congress by Harry Anslinger. To encouraging creativity, pacifism and anything else that could vaguely be tied to unpatriotic youths and communism.
How about hemp concrete? We like to think of the romans as inventing the concrete we use today and in reality they did but other cultures had stumbled upon the idea behind concrete accidentally before. Most notably the Egyptians. In response to finding what archaeologists could only conclude was some sort of hemp concrete modern scientists attempted to replicate the concrete. They found that by mixing the inner fibers of the hemp plant with limestone and water that the resulting concrete hardened into a solid that was both stronger than modern cement and 1/6th the weight. If only skyscrapers of the early part of last century could've benefited from those properties. Can you imagine a New York skyline unhindered by weight limits before the invention of steel framing?
How about hemp lumber? Ok, yeah you're probably suspecting I'm pulling this stuff from my rear end by now but really. Pressboard or particle board is one of the greatest threats to forests around the world because pressboard relied upon chipped wood which can come from old trees, new trees and everything in between. Hemp can be fashioned using the same process into wood which (thanks to hemp fiber's ultimate natural tinsile strength) is stronger, lighter and non harmful to our forests.
Further when hemp grows in the field the soil nutrients are concentrated in the leaves and the roots which is why the leafs are typically returned to the field as a natural compost. Canabis easily outcompetes other weeds and can grow just as well in arid environments as tropical environments. Farmers can use hemp to restore nutrients and essentially end up with a double harvest once they harvest their hemp.
So as we can see Canabis is a wonderfully effective crop for just about everything industrial. This alone with any other plant would justify legalizing it. Why not canabis? Well it's an unfortunate event but there's several factors. One of those factors is direct investments by corporate interests in the above industries. With the legalization of hemp, clothing would plummet in price. Further people would buy less clothes because hemp lasts so much longer. The food industry hates hemp, the paper industry hates hemp, the lumber industry hates hemp. Hemp reduces your profit margin and worst of all it's not patentable meaning the price that they can charge is severely limited by competition. Modern pharmaceuticals for example have 20 years to charge anything they want before their secret is public domain and the 'free market' competition occurs.
Now lets look at the medical benefits of canabis. For those of you who do not believe there is medical benefit to canabis use there isn't a single medicine you could be more wrong about. Marijuana has a long history of use as medicine. Indeed it's usage as such predates history. The first written accounts of marijuana being used as medicine occur in 1500 BC china.
The chinese have a long history with hemp and actually invented paper with it. Further hemp was the standard cloth of almost all people in the ancient world. The silk road would be more aptly named the marijuana road but I digress. Finally the last point I'd like to make is that the drug Marinol is THC and it is legal, why would THC be legal if there were no medical benefits? However Marinol unlike marijuana is toxic (being a concentrated dose of one good element with some bad side-effects minus the dozens of other canabinoids which play a part) and to date has caused 4 deaths. Natural Marijuana to date has caused no deaths directly attributable to marijuana.
The funny thing is that the official government stance is that marijuana has no theraputic properties. However this is refuted by the government's own reports. In 1974 for example the National Institute for Drug Abuse in it's 4th report to congress they delivered the following:
The report further noted that one should not dismiss these benefits even due to political controversy. This is one of the most forceful endorsements for Medical Marijuana to the politicians of the government but it's far from the first or even the last. Harry Anslinger the original Marijuana antagonist comissioned the La Guardia report in New York. After a lot of data crunching the report was released in 1944 to the fury to Harry Anslinger. The report concluded that every negative that Anslinger had reported to the congress was found in essence to be nothing more than a lie. This is the first time the gateway theory was debunked but the theory still persists thanks to political distraction.The modern phase of therapeutic use of cannabis began about 140 years ago when O'Shaughnessy reported on its effectiveness as an analgesic and anticonvulsant. At about the same time Moreau de Tours described its use in melancholia and other psychiatric illnesses. Those who saw favorable results observed that cannabis produced sleep, enhanced appetite and did not cause physical addiction.
The Shafer Commitee in 1974 reported the same which of course infuriated Nixon. Nixon is infamous for throwing the report into the trash and ignoring it. Further he connected Marijuana to vietnam war protests and assumed that by arresting protesters for marijuana he could silence the opposition. This proved to be wrong and luckily Nixon wasn't able to destroy all of the documentation of this.
In the 1975 paper On the Therapeutic Possibilities of Some Cannabinoids the following have all been recognized to respond favorably to marijuana throughout much of history:
Anorexia, Asthma, Nausea, Pain, Peptic Ulcer, Alcoholism, Glaucoma, Epilepsy, Depression, Migraine, Anxiety, Inflammation, Hypertension, Insomnia, Cancer
The report went on to note that marijuana's benefit for the above symptoms was proven.
This moves us to the modern history of Marijuana and Federal Medical Marijuana program. The program called the compassionate investigational new drug program focused on testing the medical benefits and risks associated with the drug. The project was scrapped in 1992 by George Bush Sr. confusingly only weeks away from it's approval by the FDA.
Why? Political maneuvering. George Bush Sr. needed an issue to swing popularity back towards him, for better or for worse he ended up losing anyways. After that no one else gave it a try. Why? Well perhaps it's because the Drug Czar said it had no medical benefit (which of course was at odds with everything the government and everyone else should've already known). Most people don't realize that the Drug Czar is legally required to deny the benefits of Marijuana and that he is likely the most overtop biased source against marijuana in the world. http://www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov/...orization.html
Since then 16 states have legalized Marijuana for medical marijuana use, Marijuana is officially recognized to have uses in the treatment of the following in it's natural form (marinol only treats a few) further there's far reaching implications of properties of Marijuana that predict it's effectiveness for hundreds of other symptoms and ailments.
Marijuana has diverse effects. It's rather hard to describe all of the effects that are occuring and how they are interacting. For example THC (the compound in marinol) can be a risk factor for schizophrenia in adolescents assuming you have a certain genetic risk factor already, it is only observed adolescent teenagers meaning adults needn't worry.
The canabinoid cannabidiol on the other hand is amongst the most effect antispsycotics known to man, even better cannabidiol seems to actually physically alter the brain to mediate problems. In autistic children it triggers the release of oxytocin relieving them of their symptoms. In depressed people it reduces pessimism and increases feelings of happiness not to mention it encourages social bonding. In schizophrenic people it suppresses the symptoms beautifully.
Marijuana does this by acting on your canabinoid receptors, most notably your CB1 and CB2 receptors. CB1 is expressed in the brain which helps explain why marijuana can affect the body, or the mind or both. Fortunately brain tumors also have CB1 receptors. When Marijuana's canabinoids interact with the cb1 receptors on tumors the tumors are repressed and even destroyed. Marijuana is only a little less effective than chemotherapy, fortunately its several magnitudes less toxic than chemotherapy.
To put that in perspective it requires a dosage of marijuana 1000x the lethal dose of aspirin to kill you. To further put that in perspective marijuana attributed deaths are 0, aspirin has up to 500 deaths. Further it is physically impossible (short of distilling the chemical and injecting it) to actually overdose through either consumption or smoking. You would have to smoke some 1500 pounds in a very short time period (minutes) to overdose.
The CB2 receptors are found throughout the body. When different canabinoids interact with them they produce different effects. Most notably is the anti-inflamatory and anti-pain effects everyone knows about. Multiple sclerosis is also wonderfully treated by Marijuana. The symptoms of MS include: Muscle Weakness, Tremor, Fatigue, Incontinence, Seizures, Vision problems, Slurred speech, Vertigo, Muscle spasticity, Lack of coordination, Depression. MS is caused by an auto-immune depletion of the myelin sheaths around your neurons these sheaths are like insulation but they also are necessary to allow the propagation of electro-chemical stimuli.
Marijuana is a variable immunosuppresant meaning that it suppresses some parts of the immune system while encouraging others. Cannabis triggers the production of Interleukin 6 which protects the myelin. Considering the prescription treatments for MS are both addictive and extremely toxic and patients can usually get by without any additional medicine besides Marijuana it should be a no brainer that we use marijuana to treat the 350,000 people suffering from MS throughout the states.
Marijuana also acts to reduce aversive memories. This is one of the strangest but proven claims of Marijuana. Marijuana actively acts on adversive memories to reduce their impact. It does this by triggering the amygdala which does this already but at a slow rate. This gives Marijuana the ability to rewrite the depression out of your brain. This same ability is why Marijuana is effective at combating schizophrenia especially paranoid schizophrenia.
Canabinoids are antioxidants. This little tidbit is great because free radicals (neutralized by antioxidants) are cited as one of the major causes of cancer and aging. They have particular effectiveness at protecting the nervous system. Further canabinoids trigger neurogenesis in the hippocampus helping further to treat depression and because of it's mediating effects on behavior as well as memory and depression marijuana has great uses for the treatment of stress disorders. Specifically Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. CBD exerts sedative, hypnotic, anxiolytic, antidepressant, antipsychotic and anticonvulsant effects. Cannabis further has use as a vasodilator and an antiemetic which helps it deal with migraines. In fact historically cannabis has been the only effective treatment for migraines.
One of marijuana's greatest potential is the potential to treat addiction. Yeah, you might've known it wasn't addictive but did you know it helps stop the addictions already there? It does this because people can substitute Marijuana for a different drug, this 'reverse' gateway effect in which marijuana is the pathway out of higher drugs is repeated throughout the world. ( http://www.harmreductionjournal.com/content/6/1/35 ) Another recent study shows marijuana having dramatic effects stabilizing blood sugar, while it's no substitute for insulin it can make the difference in managing diabetes.
There really is no other plant, no natural substance nor synthetic that has as many uses as marijuana does medically. Marijuana is medicine there is no denying it isn't. Now we know marijuana has benefits both industrially and medically, however these advantages are moot if I can't demonstrate reliably the harmlessness of marijuana.
First let us compare the death rate of Tobacco which is about 400,000 deaths per year in the US. Throughout history there is no recorded instance of someone dying from marijuana either through direct exposure or something like lung cancer. Now you might be stomping your foot questioning how I could deny the connection between Marijuana smoke and lung cancer. The answer to that is I can't. Before you hit reply let me explain.
You need to know how many people actually smoke marijuana. In the US it's estimated about 50 million people have used the drug within the last year. In the US 45 million are estimated to be 'current' tobacco smokers (as in having smoked recently). Now those 45 million result in 400,000 deaths per year directly attributable to Tobacco. The same number for marijuana? 0.
While it's possible that there are skewing results keeping that number so low given five decades of popular use in the US we should have seen the effects of marijuana smoke on lung cancer become apparent much earlier and they still remain to be seen. This curiosity demands an explanation. If you don't believe that marijuana doesn't link to lung cancer perhaps researching Dr. Donald Tashkin of UCLA's school of medicine will change your mind. While 2 packs a day will increase your risk of lung cancer with cigarettes by 20 fold, no link is observed even amongst the heaviest of marijuana smokers.
Logically marijuana smoke does produce carbon monoxide and dozens of carcinogens. Some studies show that marijuana has less of both others show cigarettes have less of both but the method of testing is far different (using a 'smoking' machine which condensates the air into a solid) than the method of smoking in our bodies, rendering both kinds of study likely useless in terms of determining relative risk from the basic constituents. However this does not result in the increase in lung cancer that we would expect.
The conventional explanation for this is that marijuana's other properties actively inhibit the formation of lung cancer. Any smoking is a risk factor for bronchitis and pneumonia. But not all smoke is made equally. Marijuana smoke consists of rather large particles of tar. These particles of tar are actually able to be evacuated by the cilia lining your lungs given time. Cigarette tar on the other hand produces tar which is extremely fine and tends to get clogged in the alveoli or airsacks in lungs. This is perhaps one explanation why long term marijuana use doesn't lead to increases in the risk factors for lung cancer. An alternate explanation is the antioxidant effects of canabinoids. Antioxidants directly counter the type of damage that occurs due to free radicals which is what cigarette smoke causes. There is no know antioxidants in cigarette smoke. Alternatively a therapeutic effect that inhibits the cancer could also likely be the cause as marijuana does actively repress cancer. It could even be a mixture of those factors plus some. The point here though is that Marijuana is not the same as cigarettes and it is not even comparable.
To put Marijuana's harmlessness into perspective let's consider the number of people who die from water intoxication. In the US there's at least 1 per year (usually children being killed by being forced to consume water by ignorant authority figures). Yes, just drinking water is more likely statistically to kill you than consuming marijuana. Of course the difference is you don't die if you don't smoke but considering 5,000 years of marijuana history (admittedly only the last few hundred are probably relevant) no deaths is rather impressive.
In medicine there's an attribute of deadliness of any substance called the LD-50 which essentially is the ratio that you must consume in order to induce death in at least 50% of the animals who you expose to it. Vitamin C's LD-50 is 11.9 grams per kilogram of body weight in mice. Vitamin E has a toxicity of 4 grams per kilogram of body weight in mice. Aspirin has an LD-50 of 1750 milligrams per kilogram of body weight in mice. Tylenol has an LD-50 of 350 mg per kilogram of body weight. To date many studies have attempted to determine the LD-50 rate of Marijuana. Unfortunately no study has actually achieved the dosage required to actually kill any animals, although a study once performed to show that marijuana harms braincells did force monkeys to smoke tons of marijuana to the point where the oxygen to smoke ratio resulted in brain damage. This was because of lack of oxygen not toxicity of marijuana.
THC does have a toxicity associated with it in Marinol but oddly enough it's toxicity plummets in natural marijuana (perhaps the interaction of another chemical?) the estimated toxicity of marijuana actually requires you to smoke about 1500 pounds or 600 kg. Which is physically impossible not to mention its proven impossible in multiple lab studies.
So marijuana is non-toxic and has fantastic uses for both medicine and industry. What about addictiveness?
I hate having to address this question because the answer is so easy to find and so obviously no This is not hidden by any report on marijuana government or otherwise. The 1944 La Guardia Commission was the first scientific paper to report no observed link between marijuana and addiction as well as no link between marijuana and a 'gateway' effect but it was far from the last. No study since has presented evidence for either the addictiveness of marijuana or the gateway effect (indeed an earlier study I talked about talked about just the opposite, marijuana being a pathway out).
While no link between marijuana and addictiveness has been shown marijuana is habitual. The difference between a habitual item and an addictive item is that you feel negative physical and mental effects for ignoring an addiction. On the other hand you might miss marijuana and be grumpy you don't have it but you won't be feeling the splitting headaches, the nausea and you definitely won't be dying from not getting your bud.
Still addictiveness is best viewed as a bit of a continuum. To be completely honest a person can literally become addicted to anything. This is what we call a psychological addiction, in which your brain creates the symptoms of physical addiction without any necessarily addictive properties with the object/activity/etc. A common psychological addiction is overzealous tanning called tannerexia. Tanning is just as addictive as marijuana. Dr. Jack E. Henningfield of the National Institute of Drug Abuse and Dr. Neal L. Benowitz of the University of California at San Francisco ranked six substances based on five problem areas from one through six:
Withdrawal; defined as the physical sickness resulting from discontinuing it's use.
Reinforcement; defined as the ability to encourage users to take the drug more and more.
Tolerance; defined as the body's ability to minimize the effect of the drug after many uses.
Dependence; defined as the inability to quit or the relapse rate of individuals who have quit.
Intoxication; defined as how impaired the drug makes you physically, mentally and socially.
While there's a bit of variance Marijuana is consistently at the end of the list. So, is marijuana addictive? Not in the medical sense, no.
Is Marijuana a gateway drug? This question makes me a sad panda (btw Marijuana treats PANDAS syndrome too) because I hear it parroted over and over and over and over and god it's retarded. By the same logic, men are more and more likely to rape women each time they have sex because sexual activity is a gateway to sexual violence (actually it's sort of the opposite in both cases).
Marijuana is not a 'gateway' drug. “It does not predict nor eventually lead to substance abuse.” Suggests a twelve year University of Pittsburgh study. This study parallels thousands of others who deny Anslinger's initial idea of a gateway progression. Moreover, the study's findings completely refute the long-held belief that has shaped prevention efforts around the globe. This gateway theory has been parroted by and molded government policy for more than six decades. The gateway theory is even half responsible for many parents initial panic upon discovering a bag of pot in their child's bedroom.
The Pittsburgh researchers tracked 214 boys beginning at ages 10-12, all of whom eventually used either legal or illegal drugs. When the boys reached 22, the were categorized into three groups: those who used only alcohol or tobacco, those who started with alcohol and tobacco and then tried marijuana (gateway sequence), and those who tried marijuana prior to alcohol or tobacco (reverse sequence).
Only a quarter of the participants who used both legal and illegal drugs (28 boys) exhibited the reverse pattern of using marijuana prior to alcohol or tobacco. This seemed to confirm the gateway theory until other illicit drugs were factored in. The groups in the study who smoked marijuana were far less likely to try other illicit drugs, on the other hand those groups without marijuana were up to 50% more likely to try illicit drugs. According to this study there is no gateway effect and combined with the growing weight of other evidence it seems to lead most to believe marijuana is the complete opposite producing an antidrug effect instead.
So marijuana is useful industrially and medically, non-toxic, non addictive and does not lead to a gateway effect but instead an anti drug effect. What about crime?
This is a rather difficult argument to deal with. Not because it's a good point but rather because it's such a ridiculous thing to say. Statistically speaking marijuana users are far less likely to commit violent crimes than sober people. Case in point? Woodstock. 500,000 people and thousands more unable to get in. Yet not one incidence of violence. Care to hazard a guess whether they were smoking the peace pipe or getting drunk?
Repeatedly cops themselves question the laws because they themselves see the hypocrisy in the system. If you ask a cop if he's ever noticed someone under the influence of marijuana at a violent crime he'll probably think for a good long time and tell you he hasn't. The bottom line is no, marijuana does not cause crime. People do not murder each other because they got high. People don't fight with each other because they got high. People don't rape each other because they were high. It simply doesn't happen as much as the Partnership for a Drug Free America wants to pretend it does.
So what about drug lords and cartel's and organized crime? The rather hilarious thing about drug laws is that politicians, lobbyists and drug dealers are all sharing the same bed. Strange bedfellows indeed? What I mean is that politicans attempt to make a law which makes a legal product which is in high demand illegal. This legal product which until recently grew wild throughout the Americas thanks to early Spanish conquistadors who donated vast amounts of seed to the natives is easy to grow and worth a lot. You've now created a black market.
Marijuana is around $360 an ounce in Oregon, to put that in perspective silver is around $30 dollars per troy ounce. You have now made a natural weed more valuable than a precious metal. Normal people begin to smuggle produce and sell the drugs. When you make between $2-5,000 every two months per indoor grow light you can imagine why normal people would get into the business. It's lucrative. Further if you're not greedy you can go indefinitely making six figures without attracting too much attention.
Now politicians look at the newly formed black market and decide that, "This means war!" with the same stupidity that daffy is known for. They decide to up the ante and increase the penalties for drug traffickers and possessors. Unfortunately they fail to stop the demand for Marijuana which in turn simply results in a price hike. This price hike once again attracts new normal people. Because when you can grow gold and you need the money you're going to do so. Marijuana in recent years has been as expensive as $600 an ounce, thats half the price of gold. Considering each plant produces up to a pound of marijuana that's a lot of damn gold.
What about the drug dealers, they have to complain right? No actually. The drug dealers are of the opinion that for every one of their competition that is arrested more for them. They can charge more for less, they can control more territory. Of course these are our normal folks who are selling. Now along the border we get to deal with the neat mexican cartel's. See America's war on drugs has been funding Mexican organized crime for 80 years now.
Cartel's aren't normal people and they do conflict with normal people. Unlike normal people who are just growing marijuana. Cartels are moving items with far higher antes and far higher prices along with the marijuana. Imagine if gold had a white powdery relative worth 30-40 times as much that also grew in the ground. What happens when a cartel's territory is infringed upon by a normal grower? Well the cartel wins. What happens when a cartel's territory is challenged by legal grow ops? Well the cartel loses after kicking and screaming a bit.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...100603847.html
In recent decades it has been the normal people who have gradually been stealing the cartel's market. Where is a cartel's market in a legal economy? It's non existent.
Now we see a trend towards legalization and corporations begin to feel th pressures (albeit in a different way) that cartel's did. There's a reason why a tomato is 25 cents. Now imagine we all had to eat tomatoes that cost 3x as much and went bad ten times as fast. Which tomato are you going to choose? That's the fear that corporate interests have. So what do you do about it? Well corporations don't use violence like cartels do. They use the law against their competition and unfortunately that can include normal people. So when a 250 billion dollar industry like the Pharmaceutical industry (which notably makes huge contributions to anti marijuana politicians) asks for what it wants it gets it. When the paper industry, when the textile industry, when the legal drug industry, when the food industry ask for something they get it (all make contributions to anti drug politicians).
What about corporations that benefit from illegal marijuana in a different way. Banks must be suspicious about large deposits right? Wrong. As long as you're smart about how you go about depositing your money banks usually won't bat an eye (lots of small deposits), they get your money which they use to make more money so from their perspective any money is good money. Do they report suspected drug dealers? Hell no. Drug dealers (as unfortunate as it is) are quite often very wealthy and banks value wealthy customers.
What about the electrical companies that supply the electricity? Seeing as law enforcement detects grow ops by looking for the heat produced by the massive amount of electricity running through grow lights you would think electrical companies might be able to tip the government off. Do they? No. Now, do either of these companies want the drugs legalized? No. While they don't want their customers arrested they're more than happy to benefit from the black market to the point where they would willingly support continuing it's existence.
In the end the government is fighting a battle it can't win. It never could win. Legalization is perhaps a few years away or maybe another twenty who knows but if we let them distract us from the truth with their rhetoric and demagoguery what happens to our freedoms. Do politicans know the truth about Marijuana? Probably, given that many of them are quite intelligent. Do they care? Only if you do.
Spoiler for The Union: The business behind getting high:
Edit; Additional Information within this thread
Marijuana: Mental Disorders, Cancer, and Cognition
Marijuana: Driving, More Cancer, and More Cognition
Originally Posted by EireEmerald
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Re: The Science of Marijuana
